President of Uganda, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. COURTESY PHOTO
President Yoweri Museveni is the most followed personality on Twitter in Uganda.
His twitter handle @KagutaMuseveni at the weekend clocked one million followers.
Twitter is an American online news and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as “tweets”.
Most people use Twitter to discover interesting people and companies online and opting to follow their tweets.
Latest figures published by socialbakers.com show that Mr Museveni has 1,001,591 followers. He is followed by former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) president Dr Kizza Besigye with 353,726 followers. Dr Besigye is followed by former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi who has 331,223 followers.
Kyaddondo East Member of Parliament, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, who leads the surging People Power political movement has 264,000 followers.
Dr Besigye is a four time presidential contender while Mr Mbabazi tried to unseat Mr Museveni in 2016.
This implies that the most popular twitter personalities in Uganda are politicians.
Globally, Mr Museveni is in 367th position.
The global chart is led by former US President Barack Obama (105 million). He is followed by his successor President Donal J Trump (59 million) and Mr Narendra Modi; the prime minister of India (46 million).
The most followed president on Twitter in Africa is Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta (3.6 million). He is followed by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the president of Egypt (2.3 million), Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari (1.9 million), Rwanda’s Paul Kagame (1.4 million) and Mr Museveni (1 million).
In Tanzania, former president Jakaya Kikwete is the most popular twitter personality with 1.1 million followers. His successor, Mr John Magufuli is followed by 598,000 people.
In South Africa, fire brand opposition politician and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters has 2.3 million followers ahead of incumbent president Cyril Ramaphosa who has 464,000 followers.
In Uganda, other institutions, personalities and organisations that have a significant number of Twitter followers include; Kampala Capital City Authority (171,921), Uganda Revenue Authority (121,602), Prime Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda (95,238), FDC(86,672), National Resistance Movement (74,751), and Twaweza (74,751).
The top five media houses in terms of twitter followers are; NTV Uganda (798,260), Daily Monitor (587,814), New Vision (477,438), NBS TV (333,253) and Red Pepper (308,019).
